Thursday, March 28, 2013

The Hairdresser Point of View: Jackie Kennedy vs. Nancy Reagan

Beneath her decorous demeanor, New York style icon Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis cursed like a sailor but was so glamorous, she could make a $35 wig look sublime, according to her longtime hairdresser.

The former first lady’s hairstylist Edgar Montalvo — who’s just returned to the city after a decade in Florida — said in a revealing Page Six interview that, “While people saw [Onassis] as an icon, she didn’t look at it that way.

“She cursed just like anybody,” he said. “I once told her, ‘Jackie, there’s a photographer behind your house,’ and she’d say, ‘That son of a bitch!’[...]

“[Jackie] was wonderful,” added Montalvo, who worked with her for eight years before her death, in 1994. While working for Thomas Morrissey Salon, he was responsible for bringing wigs to Onassis after she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. “I brought her $2,000, $3,000 wigs and one $35 wig that looked the best out of all of them,” he fondly recalled. “She had really wiry hair, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at her.”

Montalvo — who’s counted Diane von Furstenberg and Joan Rivers as clients, and is now at Upper East Side salon Yossi Yossi — further opened up to us with kind words about his clients — except for another former First Lady Nancy Reagan.

“I have nothing positive to say. Nothing,” he said of her. “And she’s still alive.” He said Reagan would have security arrive before her for appointments. But Onassis arrived “just free.”

“Nancy was pretty rough,” Montalvo said. “I didn’t find her to be pleasant. What’s the word I could use? Not obnoxious. Standoffish. Like the world owed her. That’s the impression I got.”

Of Onassis he added: “Jackie was very normal. I found her to be a cool lady: pleasant, thoughtful, kind. Usually she’d bring a book and half a tuna sandwich [to appointments].”

2 comments:

I guess a philandering husband may be requisite for a more gracious First Lady temperament? Still like to know if Ronnie colored his hair and, if so, did he claim the Grecian formula as a personal care expense or did he put it on the taxpayers' tab? These are the questions that keep me up at night. Not the effects of sequestration.

To be honest I am surprised that either of them attended hairdressers I would have expected the hairdresser to go to them! And as for customer loyalty. You can bet your bottom dollar I wouldn't use any one who I know to snitch on a client!